Playing computer games requires more than just the cheapest bargain computer with wimpy hardware components. Those kinds of gaming computers may have attention-capturing specs like Intel i7 processors or Windows 8 OS, but it's everything else that defines what the machine can actually do for your gaming. No-name motherboards and generic RAM are inexpensive – but you end up paying a steep price in performance. Playing games on a system with substandard hardware is like entering the Indy 500 with your mom's old station wagon. People who know gaming PCs know that high-end hardware is what makes high-end gaming computers. The CyberPower PC Black Pearl receives our TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award because it's the gaming PC that sets the standard for high-end gaming systems. This machine is full of components with names like Corsair and Gigabyte, both highly rated manufactures in their respective fields. Overall, this machine outdoes the competition without breaking a sweat.

Graphics & Performance

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Recently, NVIDIA unleashed the new and improved GTX 580, which is by far their best graphics card. This card is one of the most powerful on the market, giving the owner of one a nice smooth ride in any game they play. CyberPower's Black Pearl gaming PC comes equipped with two of these amazing cards, which is more than enough graphic processing power to run any game at max graphic settings and maintain a high frame rate. Not only will you be able to play the most graphically intense game, but you’ll also be able to run other software at the same time.

Each card has 1.5GB of GDDR5 video memory, which is more than enough for any game and is only dwarfed by AMD's flagship, the ATI Radeon HD 5970, which has 2GB. The 1.5GB of memory are clocked at 1848 MHz and boast a core speed of 772 MHz, which is the fastest on the market.

Aside from excellent performance, the GTX 400 and 500 series graphics cards both use DirectX 11, which is the newest multimedia and gaming technology used to enhance the graphics and make games even more realistic. For a while, ATI cards were the only contenders in that market, but that is no longer the case. DX 11 focuses on adding more computing support and as well as rendering tessellation, While tessellation is not a new thing, its use has been hampered in high-end gaming by the high processing power necessary to do it well. Since the DX 11 release, though, that is about to change. DX 11 gives game developers and players more fluid graphics that result in more realistic-looking game characters and terrain -- a must when try to compete in the world of processing gaming graphics.

NVIDIA’s FERMI technology, coupled with power of DX 11, make the GTX 580 card – and the Black Pearl – a top system for rendering complex graphics. With this added technology and support, you will experience some seriously intense graphics in every game you play on the CyberPower PC Black Pearl.

Processor & Storage

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Quad-core processors dominate most of the high-end gaming computer market. However, both Intel and AMD have taken the next step and developed a six-core, 12-thread chip. The CyberPower PC Black Pearl utilizes the Intel Core i7 980 Extreme, which is one of the most powerful CPUs on the market. This processor is clocked at 3.3 GHz but comes over clocked to 4 GHz. Normally you would have to worry about heat, but the Asetek 510LC 120mm Liquid Cooling system keeps the processor at a reasonable temperature.

Design & Connectivity

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CyberPowerPC Zeus Evo

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Digital Storm Vanquish 3

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Alienware X51

Lenovo Erazer X510

XoticPC Executioner

Velocity Micro Edge Z40

iBuyPower Erebus

Maingear Potenza

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Another very important feature that every gaming PC needs is a good set of RAM. The CyberPower PC Black Pearl has 16GB of Corsair's XMS DDR3, which has a processing speed of 1600MHz. The motherboard allows for adding another four sticks if you wish, and it can handle faster clock speeds as well. That is plenty of RAM power, and this will by no means be a bottleneck on this rig. If there is a potential bottleneck, it would probably be the hard drive, which is a regular 7200 1TB HDD. Thankfully, this is the secondary drive. The primary is an 80GB Intel SSD. As long as you are using this drive and not the secondary, you likely won’t run into any problems with slow speeds.

Help & Support

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CyberPowerPC Zeus Evo

ASUS ROG

Digital Storm Vanquish 3

Acer Predator G

Alienware X51

Lenovo Erazer X510

XoticPC Executioner

Velocity Micro Edge Z40

iBuyPower Erebus

Maingear Potenza

10

8.8

9.4

7.5

8.8

6.9

8.8

7.5

10

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The motherboard housing all these jaw-dropping pieces of technology is the MSI X58A-GD45 X58, which should handle just about anything you can throw at it. The CyberPower PC Black Pearl has two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots. There is another x16 slot and three plain PCI Express slots. There is also a PCI slot for anyone still using equipment that requires one. With about every SATA connection you can think of you should have no problems with storage interface options. In addition, there is a FireWire connection and up to 10 USB ports at your disposal.

This gaming computer runs Windows 8, as most other pre-built machines do. There are two optical drives: a Blu-ray drive and a DVD +/- RW drive. With high quality hardware like the i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, NVIDIA graphics cards, optical drives, water cooling and everything else, you can imagine how much power this gaming computer must need. Thankfully, there is a 1,000-watt power supply to do the job, and it does it well. A power supply with this much wattage will have no problem keeping up to speed with advancing technology.

Cyberpower Black Pearl Summary:

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As you can see, this gaming computer is by no means the "$300 super savings special." Quality gaming computers need high-end hardware and unmatched computing speeds and this system gives you all the computing power you could ever want in a gaming machine. With this imaging machine, you can confidently set sail on the vast ocean of great games, then pillage and plunder to your heart's desire. With great new games coming out and advanced DirectX 11 implementations creeping into the works, all gamers can use a powerhouse like the CyberPower PC Black Pearl to help them in their epic gaming adventures.